It was close, but Yorktown High School multiple-sport student-athlete Kaiya Ovando made it with a bit of time to spare.
With many anxiously following her progress, Ovando successfully participated in two different championship high-school sporting events at venues hours apart on Friday, June 5.
And she did a little singing as well.
“It was crazy how this all worked out so well,” Yorktown director of student activities Mike Krulfeld said.
Starting at 2 p.m. in Newport News, Ovando competed in the Virginia High School League’s Class 6 girls state track-and-field meet. There she won her first state title by finishing first in the discus event with a personal best and school record throw of 134-feet, 7-inches.
Ovando left Newport News at 2:45 p.m. with her father, Marco, driving. Their goal was to make it back to Yorktown in Arlington by 6:30 p.m. so Ovando could be the Patriots’ starting catcher that night in the championship game of the 6D North Region tournament girls softball tournament.
It would be a challenge. Even without significant traffic issues on congested interstates, the travel time is roughly 3 hours and 15 minutes. With traffic, who could predict how long the drive might take?
“I’ve never looked at the traffic reports as much as I did today,” Yorktown coach Chris Cardinale told ARLnow. “We were all of course worried and concerned. We had to have Kaiya in our lineup.”
The Ovandos caught a traffic break and got lucky. They arrived at Yorktown by 6 p.m. So the all-district catcher was in the starting lineup, even having time for a few warmups.
“There really wasn’t much traffic and that helped me get here to the softball game on time,” Ovando said. “My father wasn’t driving that fast, either.”
In addition to playing the softball game, Ovando, who sings in Yorktown’s choir, sang the National Anthem prior to that contest, as she often did at home games this spring.
The host Patriots and Ovando lost 9-0 to the favored Madison Warhawks in the region final. Still, the team qualified for the Class 6 state tournament for the first time in program history. So Ovando’s standout high-school athletic career continues.
She has participated in both softball and track-and-field during the spring season all four years.
When competing in the day’s events and singing, Ovando said she concentrated on just one thing at a time.
“I was pretty nervous about the day. But when I was throwing the discus, I blocked out what would be coming up next,” Ovando said.
She was seeded second at the state meet in the discus. Her winning throw came on her fifth of six attempts, beating her previous best at the meet by some three feet.
“I trusted my form,” said Ovando, who will attend the College of William and Mary and be a member of the women’s track-and-field team.
In the region-final softball game, Ovando played the whole game. She threw out a runner trying to steal third.
With the bat, the power hitter (eight homers during the season) went 0 for 3, including a hard line out to left field and a deep fly out to center.
“We didn’t play our best. Too many errors,” Ovando said. “We might have been a little flat.”
Ovando did not qualify for the shot put event in the state track-and-field meet. Otherwise, she would have traveled back to Newport News for that event the next day on June 6.
Ovando finished second in the shot put in early March at the VHSL’s Class 6 indoor state meet.
She was a champion or top finisher in district, region and state meets throughout her high-school career in both the shot and discus.
For Ovando’s all-around performances during the 2025-26 school year, she received two big awards: the Better Sports Club of Arlington’s female high-school Athlete of the Year and her high school’s female Athlete of the Year.
NOTE: Back in the winter of 2007, another Yorktown athlete accomplished something similar to what Ovando did. Ari Molina first won a district wrestling championship for Yorktown early one evening. Then, an hour later, but 20 miles away at a different venue, Molina finished second in a race at the state swimming meet without any warmup. With someone else driving, Molina changed uniforms in the back seat of a car en route to the swim meet. He arrived just five minutes prior to the race because there were traffic issues on Interstate 66 getting to the pool at George Mason University. For his efforts, Molina was featured in Sports Illustrated.
